Invader Zim's Effect on My Life
by NightmareKitty
Summary: An essay I wrote for English class in honor of Invader Zim. After all, 17 January is near. Sorry about me being lazy on the ZDN. I'm working on it, and I've been busy with shtuff, believe you me. Don't hurt me, PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE?


Invader Zim's Effect on My Life  
  
By Nightmare Kitty  
  
January 17. A dark day for the fans of the cult hit Invader Zim, for it was one year ago on this day that it was cancelled. It had only a brief life on the small screen, being a late night show on Nickelodeon. All the same, it is a day of mourning. Some of us will make web banners or other pictures to put up on their website. Some might light candles, as I will. Still others might watch marathons or wear the t-shirts of it. All remember what it brought them, and how they came to love it. This is my take on it.  
  
It was August of 2001 when I turned on Nickelodeon to watch the nightly U- Pick. I was a lonely kid, recovering from a hard operation, feeling quite depressed. An odd icon came up for a show called Invader Zim, the icon showing a happy grey and blue robot and a boy with a strange look on his face, a trench coat, large glasses and spiky hair . . . characters I came to know and love as GIR and Dib. The episode they showed was called "Attack of the Saucer Morons," and I watched it, trying to figure out what was going on. I didn't get it this first time I saw it, and, to tell the truth, I wasn't sure that I liked it. A couple days later, however, it showed again, and it was just my luck that it was the first episode. I got it. I understood the world, the plot and the characters. I saw it again shortly after, and my obsession with this blessed show had begun. With an obsession, a love for something, I recovered quickly from my depression and started to live again. I watched the show, I went on sites and read the fan fiction, learned as much as I could about it and recommended it to the few friends I had.  
  
Shortly after I discovered the show, I started to draw the characters from screenshots off the Internet, tracing and copying very carefully. When I thought I had mastered the style, I tested myself by drawing me as an Invader Zim character. That half-assed attempt at drawing myself in that style became my cartoon alter-ego, Aertis, after many attempts at drawing her better. It was about March of 2002 when I started considering that I could be a cartoonist. I had been drawing comics since January, and some of them were becoming very detailed, looking like some of the more complicated shots from the show. Shortly after, Nightmare Kitty became known school wide, helping me to win the election for Student Ambassador.  
  
Also a result of my Invader Zim fandom was my discovery of the online writing community FanFiction.net. As well as providing a board for every piece of media with a strong fan base, the site also has a section where one can put their original works up for reviewing by other writers. I have 15 stories up there now and a presence on the Invader Zim board that I wouldn't have imagined when I first started writing. Many of my favorite writers are on my buddy list, and I'm on theirs.  
  
The dark day came in mid-January when they cancelled it. That which had so helped me, that which I loved, that which had brought me a place in the world . . . they had killed it. Sorrow turned to denial, and in turn denial turned to anger. They had killed it. They had killed the characters. Dib was dead. GIR was dead. Gaz, Zim, Red, Purple, Membrane . . all dead and gone. Nickelodeon had murdered them. Anger, sorrow, all such emotions welled up in me, often making me cry when they advertised for such replacements as Butt Ugly Martians and Jimmy Neutron. That such imposters, such mocking imitations could replace my favorite characters was an outrage and a point of extreme unhappiness to me. I signed the petitions, using several aliases: Aertis, Matilda, Nightmare Kitty, Shain, Artemis . . . these were only a few. I would've done anything . . . I still will . . . to save those I now regard as my friends. Hope fades, though, and I maintain only a frail idea that the show might be saved. I mourn my fallen friends, and swear vengeance against their killers.  
  
On January 17, 2003, I'll remember what Invader Zim brought me. I now have a new hobby, a community and a standing that I could only dream of last year. Since discovering Invader Zim, I found a place and another way to express myself with many others much like me to see it and understand. I'll wear my t-shirt, my socks, my beanie and my belt with the characters on them, watch a marathon and light a candle in honor of a show that helped me up. 


End file.
